Bengaluru: On June 11, Bhupender Yadav resumed charge as the Union environment minister. Yadav is part of the new cabinet put together by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won the Lok Sabha 2024 elections.
Yadav, a senior leader in the Bharatiya Janata Party (NJP), contested the elections from Alwar, Rajasthan, where he won with 6,31,992 votes, defeating Congress’s Lalit Yadav by a margin of 48,282 votes. When the NDA announced its new cabinet ministers on June 9, Yadav was given the Union environment ministry again; and this time, Kirtivardhan Singh (who the people of Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, elected) is minister of state. Yadav first took charge as Union environment minister in July 2021, during Modi’s second term.
After resuming charge on Tuesday at the headquarters of the ministry of environment, forest and climate change at New Delhi, a government press release stated that Yadav said that “the focus” of the ministry “will remain on initiatives such as Mission LiFE- Lifestyle for Environment”. According to Yadav, “many steps have been taken by this Ministry in the last 10 years under the leadership of PM Modi and that the Government was moving ahead taking environment and development together”.
Indeed, the Union environment ministry has taken several steps over the last 10 years to promote development – but they have come at the cost of India’s environment, forests and wild lands in most cases.
Here, The Wire brings to you some examples of this: how some of the “many steps” taken up during Yadav’s time as Union environment minister have, in fact, diluted numerous legislations that were in place for environmental protection and forest and wildlife conservation. But this isn’t limited to Yadav’s watch alone: it has been a steady erosion throughout Modi’s prime ministership.
Yadav’s watch: July 2021 – present
But first, let’s look at some of the more recent steps that the environment ministry took, post-July 2021 – during Yadav’s term as Union environment minister – and the concerns that experts have raised regarding these changes.
In March this year, the Union environment ministry notified new rules for the transfer of captive elephants. Asiatic elephants can now be transferred between individuals or states for “religious and other purposes” something that the law did not permit before. While such transfers are still dependent on certain criteria and obtaining specific permits, including from the Chief Wildlife Wardens of the originating and recipient states, they’ve been watered down.
An Asian elephant. Photo: Mike Prince/Flickr CC BY 2.0
Earlier, for instance, permits from all Chief Wildlife Wardens from states that the elephant would pass through on its journey were mandatory. Experts unequivocally agree that the new rules are a huge blow to elephant conservation in the country: these, along with the amendment to the Wild Life Protection Act (1972) in 2022, could legitimise the live trade of elephants and encourage the illegal capture of elephants from the wild, they have said.
Also read: Animal Rights Groups Write to Centre to Strengthen Captive Elephant Transfer and Transport Rules
Exactly a year before – in March 2023 – Yadav introduced the environment ministry’s amendment of the Forest Conservation Act (1980) in the Lok Sabha. The FCA – a crucial legislation that ensures, among other things, that forests of all kinds (including patches that fit the dictionary meaning of a forest but are not recognised legally as such, as per an order by the Supreme Court in 1996) are protected in the country – is now the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980.
Though citizens, activists, ecologists, conservationists, retired civil servants and others had raised numerous concerns including the wording in the proposed Bill that dilutes the definition of a forest putting tracts including community and deemed forests at risk, and opens up large forested patches to developmental activities, the Union government still passed the Bill as an Act last year.
Even in this process, the Union government did not follow due course. However, following several petitions regarding the issue, the Supreme Court passed an interim order in February this year that not only upholds the definition of a forest as specified in its 1996 judgment until more records of forest cover are submitted by states and union territories but also clarified that forest land cannot be diverted for safaris or zoos without the prior approval of the court.
Incidentally, Yadav – during whose watch this amendment that will have huge ramifications on forest conservation in India has come through – is a lawyer by profession, has served as an advocate in the Supreme Court and, in 2011, co-authored a book titled Supreme Court on Forest Conservation with well-known environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta.
In September 2022, India welcomed the first African cheetahs as part of Project Cheetah, India’s ambitious cheetah reintroduction programme based currently in Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh. So far, seven adults and four cubs born on Indian soil have died. Experts have said that some of the adults died due to infections caused by the radio collars around their necks though the Uunion government has maintained that all deaths were due to “natural causes”. Now, park authorities keep tranquilizing adults and bringing them back to Kuno if they stray ‘too far’ from the Park and into human habitation. That cheetahs have huge home ranges and Kuno may be too small for the existing cheetahs is something experts had pointed to when the project was implemented.
Other questions experts have asked include why India’s lions – currently restricted to Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat – were not relocated to Kuno, as the Supreme Court ordered them to be; and why fund a project to bring in and conserve African cheetahs when native species such as the Great Indian bustard – a large, critically endangered grassland-dwelling bird – languish. While Project Cheetah has been in the works for almost two decades and was approved while the United Progressive Alliance was in power, the project became a reality during Modi’s second term as prime minister.
Add to the list, India’s obsession with numbers, over action: India is now home to 84 Ramsar sites; the aim was to have a total of 75 Ramsar sites in the country to celebrate 75 years of independence in the year 2022. Declaring a wetland as a Ramsar site comes with perks: it gives the wetland international recognition, and this can often translate to more protection, and more funds to implement this protection. But that’s not really what’s happening on the ground, experts told The Wire. While the number of Ramsar sites have increased over the years, the status of most of these wetlands — even if they are Ramsar sites — leaves a lot to be desired. Many don’t have management plans; and those that do still face challenges such as implementation of the plans, road construction, tourism projects and more.
In December 2021, the Union cabinet approved the first river interlinking project in India. The project involves constructing a dam and a channel between the Ken and Betwa rivers in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh at a cost of Rs 44,605 crore. Water experts and hydrologists have commented on how disastrous this project will be for the rivers in terms of its impact on ecology, loss of 27 lakh trees and submergence of a part of Panna Tiger Reserve. Moreover, the hydrological impact of the loss of trees in the already water-stressed landscape of Bundelkhand will only make matters worse, experts say.
A steady erosion
The dilution of existing legislations to protect India’s environment, and conserve forests and wildlife, however, wasn’t limited to Yadav’s watch alone: it’s been a steady erosion throughout the Modi regime which began in 2014.
Representative image of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Photo: Steve Hoge/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
In September 2020 – right during the Covid-19 pandemic – the Niti Aayog issued a call for proposals to ‘develop’ Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost island in the Andaman and Nicobar complex in the Bay of Bengal. Over the months and years that have followed (along with an Environment Impact Assessment report that was incomplete, cherry-picked data and ignored existing information on the biodiversity of the island), the Union environment ministry gave quick forest, and then environmental, clearances for the projects on the island. The projects involve building a transhipment port terminal, airport, township and power plant, all worth a whopping Rs 72,000 crore.
The ministry even denotified Galathea Bay in 2021 to enable the implementation of the projects. The construction of these will involve cutting 8.5 lakh rainforest trees, dredging the ocean, reclaiming 300 hectares of it, the destruction of habitats of endemic species (including a bird known as the Nicobar megapode) and a beach frequented by giant leatherback turtles to lay eggs. The project will affect more than 20,000 coral colonies. More than 1,700 people belonging to the indigenous Shompen and Nicobarese communities will be affected by the project. Social scientists have called it a “death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide”. And yet, the Union government continues to push forward with the controversial project.
The same year, the environment ministry published the Draft Environment Impact Assessment Notification, to supersede the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, under which industries can avail of clearances to establish or expand industries based on the expected environmental impact of the project.
In April 2023, Down to Earth reported about how the Union government made more than 100 changes – including reducing both the number of days made available for public consultation and the time period in which to give environmental clearance – to the Environment Impact Assessment Notification via office memorandums (which are not up for public consultation) over the last five years. The most number of changes occurred in 2022.
In 2019, the Union environment ministry gave in-principle approval to relax air pollution standards for coal-fired thermal power plants, as The Wire reported. The environment ministry’s notification in December 2015 set air pollution standards for thermal power plants. Per this notification, nitrogen oxide emissions from thermal power plants set up between 2003 to 2016 should not exceed 300 mg/Nm³. The Ministry of Power, however, objected to this, and the environment ministry gave in-principle approval in May 2019 to increase the emission limit of nitrogen oxides from 300 mg/Nm³ to 450 mg/Nm³ – despite the Central Pollution Control Board opposing this move at the time. As The Wire reported, two thermal power plants owned by Adani Power Rajasthan Ltd benefited from this. A report in 2022 by an energy group noted the “patterns of delays and dilution” in adhering to and implementing environmental norms.
Biologist Vijay Ramesh, currently with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, analysed 48,000 clearance proposals (for several infrastructure and developmental projects including mining by the union environment ministry) from 1975 to 2014 and between 2014 to 2020. He found that the proportion of forest areas stated to be cleared since 2014 is over 68 percent of what was cleared between 1975 and 2014.
This is not a comprehensive list, by any means. But one that goes to show some of the “many steps” that the Union environment ministry took after 2014 that overlooked the environment as well as local, indigenous and vulnerable communities, and continues to do so. These examples are a stark reminder that so far, environment and development have definitely not gone together during the ten years of Modi’s prime ministership.